Increasing your website’s domain authority is probably the best thing you can do to eventually increase your overall search engine rankings. But how do you do it? This post is all about that and a lot more.

So, what exactly is Domain Authority (DA)?

Originally developed by Moz, Domain Authority is a metric that predicts how well a website will rank in search engine result pages.

It is calculated by looking at a lot of factors (40 to be exact), like the number of unique domains linking to your page, the number of external links your domain has acquired over time, internal linking structure of your web pages, quality of your content & more.DA scores websites on a scale of 0 to 100, with every new website starting off with a DA score of 1, which increases over time as they work on building their online presence.

How do I increase it?

So, now you know what domain authority is and some of the factors it takes into consideration to score websites over the web. Now, let’s take a look at the 6 practical steps you need to follow if you are looking to increase the domain authority of your website –

Technical SEO Optimization

Being a renowned SEO company ourselves, we are well aware of the importance of your website’s technical SEO in your overall SEO performance. While most of the technical SEO tasks are simple, if they are not implemented correctly on your website, it can have a detrimental impact on your domain authority and search engine rankings.So, you should tackle the technical aspect of your website’s SEO first to lay a strong foundation that would support your other on-page & off-page SEO efforts (which we will get to in a while).To increase your website’s domain authority, here are some of the significant technical SEO website elements you need to care of –

On-page SEO Optimization

On-page SEO includes everything related to optimizing your individual web pages and it’s content. Here are a few elements to take care of while doing on-page SEO –

Quality content is a top on-page and off-page SEO factor. Always strive to provide good, relevant content to your users and search engines.

Naturally add the most relevant keywords in your content. Focus on ‘naturally’.

Optimize meta titles and descriptions of all your web pages

Use of headings (H1 & H2) in your content

Easily readable URL structure and SEO optimized slugs

Adding title and Alt-text to all your images, videos, and other visual properties

Make use of Internal Linking

Off-page SEO Optimization

When it comes to optimizing your website’s off-page SEO, optimizing your link profile is what you need to specifically take care of. Here’s how you can do it –

Removing bad linksYou can increase the quality of your existing link profile by removing backlinks from spammy or low DA websites. You can use a link analysis tool like Ahrefs or Moz for this.

Building authoritative linksProviding quality content that people love to share within their inner circles is at the heart of building a quality link profile. Every share that you earn on your awesome content will serve as a backlink for that specific web page or content, increasing your website’s search engine ranking. Other way to earn quality backlinks from authoritative publishers is via outreach. For that, you’ll have to find publishers that share (to a point) the same audience as you and pitch your content (should be relevant) to them to earn a backlink. When you start putting out content that people like to read and share in the niche you are in, backlinks come naturally! Combine them with your proactive outreach efforts and you’ll have a stunning backlink profile in no time.

Generate Social SignalsContent that manages to earn a lot of likes, comments & social shares usually have a tendency to rank high in Google.Here are a few things you can do to generate some social signals for your website and individual web pages – 1. Maintain an active business presence on popular social media marketing platforms like Facebook & Twitter and start building a fanbase. 2. Mention it on your website (probably with a clickable logo in the header or footer) so visitors can easily find you and connect with you on their preferred social media network.3. Provide social sharing buttons on every blog you publish or on every webpage you create so that users can easily share your content with their friends.

Mobile Friendliness

We have said it many times already and we will say it again – Go mobile!More than half of your users access your website via mobile, so it makes sense to optimize your website for the same. Optimizing your website for mobile became a hot topic when Google introduced it’s mobile-first indexing algorithm. The algorithm was designed to index and crawl the mobile website first of any each and every domain to ascertain it’s search engine rankings, and it’s desktop counterpart would come next. So, there’s no doubt that mobile accessibility of your website is a definite ranking factor and may effect you DA as well. If you are looking to optimize your website for your mobile users, we extensively covered this topic a while back. Do give it a read.

Website Speed

Apparently, your website speed also effects your search engine rankings. Sites that take a lot of time to load will usually have a lower DA then quicker websites. Which makes sense, as according to their own study, there is a direct relation between the speed of a website and it’s bounce rate and Google hates seeing their searchers bouncing off websites. You can spike your DA score marginally by working on speeding up your website (for both desktop and mobile) only.You can use Google’s own Mobile-friendly test tool or Pingdom to easily speed up your website and enjoy increased search engine rankings and eventually, traffic for your website.

Implement the steps listed above and see your DA tick like never before! If you know of any other tactic that worked well in increasing your website’s domain authority over time, do let us know in the comments.

Saifi Rizvi is an Organic Search expert with deep understanding of Local and National SEO. Besides Organic, Saifi also has experience in delivering results in complex PPC campaigns across different industry verticals.A promising star of Saffron, Saifi is a Search expert who is proficient in creating search tactics and ROI driven campaigns that have won him tons of accolades from his clients. Besides driving campaigns, Saifi also likes to read on latest technology and trends while looking out for different avenues to share his ideas and write on various Internet Marketing topics for reputed journals.Saifi also likes to play cricket and watch action movies that grace the theaters from time to time.

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